ABA: Suspend executions in Ky.

By Brett Barrouquere Associated Press FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- Kentucky should suspend all executions indefinitely because of a high rate of convictions being reversed and few protections against executing the mentally disabled, the American Bar Association recommended in a study released Wednesday. "It is the Assessment Team's unanimous view that so long as Kentucky imposes the death penalty, it must be reserved for the worst offenders and offenses, ensure heightened due process and minimize risk of executing the innocent," the 438-page report stated. Team members included two former state Supreme Court justices, law professors and private attorneys. Linda Ewald, a University of Louisville law professor and member of the study team, said team members "were left with no option" but to recommend a moratorium on executions. "We came into this with no real idea of what we would find," Ewald said. "This report is really about the administration of justice in Kentucky." The report is part of the ABA's Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project, which has examined eight other states since 2001. The project calls for a nationwide moratorium on executions while problems are addressed. The project recommended similar suspensions in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee, but did not go that far in studies done in Florida, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Upcoming states being examined are Missouri, Texas and Virginia. No state has followed through on the moratorium recommendation, but Ohio and Tennessee used the ABA reports as a blueprint to create commissions to study the death penalty, while Florida took up an ABA recommendation to create a commission to examine wrongful convictions in the state. In Kentucky, executions are already on hold pending the outcome of a case in Franklin Circuit Court. "In the meantime, we will carefully review and study the 400-plus page report provided by the ABA assessment team," Gov. Steve Beshear said. In Kentucky's report, the team found that of the 50 people sentenced to death since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 78 have had convictions or sentences overturned by state or federal courts -- an error rate of about 64 percent. Team members also concluded the state needs tighter regulations on the preservation of evidence, noting there are no statewide regulations for what to do with items while an inmate remains incarcerated. That lack of guidance could deprive someone of an opportunity for post-conviction DNA testing that could cast doubt on their conviction, the ABA team concluded. Researchers also found that Kentucky lacks safeguards for ensuring the mentally disabled are not wrongfully convicted. The researchers credited Kentucky with creating a public defender system and enacting a law allowing post-conviction DNA testing. Kentucky has executed three people since 1976, the last of whom was Marco Allen Chapman in 2008. Beshear had set an execution date in September 2010 for 56-year-old Gregory L. Wilson, who was condemned for the 1987 kidnapping, rape and murder of 36-year-old Debbie Pooley in northern Kentucky. Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd stopped that execution and all others while questions remain about how prison officials would handle tests for competency, sanity and mental retardation once an execution date is set. A final ruling is pending in that case. Kentucky also lacks a supply of sodium thiopental, the first drug used in a lethal injection, because of a national shortage of the narcotic. Published: Thu, Dec 8, 2011

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